Book Details

About This Book

Slash development time by improving the efficiency of your PHP coding and organizing your projects in the PHPEclipse environment

Learn to use Eclipse for debugging PHP applications, interfacing with databases, and managing source code

No previous knowledge of Eclipse required

Who This Book Is For

This book is written for PHP developers who want an open source development environment for creating web applications. You do not need any knowledge of Java or prior experience of Eclipse to use this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Preface

What This Book Covers

What You Need for This Book

Conventions

Reader Feedback

Customer Support

Chapter 2: Overview of Eclipse and PHPEclipse

Integrated Development Environments

IDEs in Development Projects

Eclipse

The Eclipse Architecture

Why Use Eclipse?

PHPEclipse

Summary

Chapter 3: Installation

Installing Apache/PHP

Installing Java

Eclipse

Installing PHPEclipse

Putting It All Together

Summary

Chapter 4: The Eclipse Interface

Starting Eclipse

The Eclipse Welcome Screen

Perspectives

Quantum DB Perspective

Editors

PHPEclipse Views

Personalizing Your Perspectives

Summary

Chapter 5: Writing PHP Code with Eclipse

Creating a Project

The Editor

Creating a Web Application

HTML Cleanup Using HTML Tidy

Code Documentation Using phpDocumentor

Summary

Chapter 6: Testing and Debugging

About the Debugger

Installing the Debugger

Configuring Eclipse as the Debugger Client

Troubleshooting Tips

How to Use the Debugger

Navigating Through a Debugging Session

Debugging Strategies

XDebug

Summary

Chapter 7: Using the Quantum DB Plug-In

Relational Databases

The Quantum DB Plug-In

Summary

Chapter 8: Version Control

Version Control Overview

Installing and Setting Up CVS

The CVS Repository Perspective

Subclipse

Summary

Chapter 9: Deploying Your Site

Setting Up a Test FTP Server

.FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV Export

Using Ant for Deployment

Summary

Chapter 10: Plug-ins and Plug-in Sites

Community Sites

Notable Language Plug-ins

Chapter 11: The Eclipse Update Manager

Installing New Plug-Ins

Updating Current Software

What You Will Learn

Finding your way around the Eclipse environment

Working with the PHP editing features of PHPEclipse to correct your PHP syntax

In Detail

The fusion of Eclipse, the leading open source development environment, and PHP is an exciting prospect for web developers. This book makes sure that you are up and running as quickly as possible, ready to take full advantage of PHPEclipse's tuned PHP development tools, without requiring any prior knowledge of Eclipse.

You will begin with installing and configuring PHPEclipse, before moving onto a tour of the Eclipse environment, familiarizing you with its main components. As a plug-in to Eclipse, PHPEclipse is able to harness the platform to provide a rich and powerful development experience.

For helping you improve the efficiency of your PHP coding, the book details the powerful editing features of PHPEclipse, and shows you how to use it to better organize your application code.

You will see how PHPEclipse helps you throughout the development lifecycle, and learn how to use PHPEclipse's debugger to troubleshoot and step through your PHP code as it executes. The book rounds off with coverage of accessing databases and managing source code from within the . For the final step for your application, you will learn how to deploy your site to a production server.

Authors

Shu-Wai Chow

Shu-Wai Chow has worked in computer programming and information technology for the past eight years. He started his career in Sacramento, California, spending four years as the webmaster for Educaid, a First Union Company, and another four years at Vision Service Plan as an application developer. Through the years, he has become proficient in Java, JSP, PHP, ColdFusion, ASP, LDAP, XSLT, and XSL-FO. Shu has also been the volunteer webmaster and a feline adoption counselor for several animal welfare organizations in Sacramento.

He is currently a software engineer at Antenna Software in Jersey City, New Jersey, and is finishing his studies in Economics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Born in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, Shu did most of his alleged growing up in Palo Alto, California. He lives on the Jersey Shore with seven very demanding cats, four birds that are too smart for their own good, a tail-less bearded dragon, a betta who needs her tank cleaned, a dermestid beetle colony, a cherished Fender Stratocaster, and a beloved, saint-like fiancé.

Alerts & Offers

Series & Level

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Learning

As a new user, these step-by-step tutorial guides will give you all the practical skills necessary to become competent and efficient.

Beginner's Guide

Friendly, informal tutorials that provide a practical introduction using examples, activities, and challenges.

Essentials

Fast paced, concentrated introductions showing the quickest way to put the tool to work in the real world.

Cookbook

A collection of practical self-contained recipes that all users of the technology will find useful for building more powerful and reliable systems.

Blueprints

Guides you through the most common types of project you'll encounter, giving you end-to-end guidance on how to build your specific solution quickly and reliably.

Mastering

Take your skills to the next level with advanced tutorials that will give you confidence to master the tool's most powerful features.

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Progressing

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